Trials as inconvenient and as painful as they are are a journey of discovery of who you're dealing with.

Dr Tony Evans says the storms of life are there for a reason.

It talks about the resources God's given us to weather them.

Your salvation and your savior was built with your struggle in mind.

This is the alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker,

senior pastor of Oakcliffe Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas,

and president of the Urban Alternative.

Sometimes life gets so stormy that we wonder if we're going to make it through.

But Dr. Evans says even when things are at their worst, there's something

bigger at play than the storm. Let's join him as he explains.

Jesus has been teaching all day. He's been teaching the crowds, preaching the big sermon, and then he takes his disciples

aside and he gives them a private word. He says in verse 33 of Mark 4, with many such parables he was speaking the word to them,

so far as they were able to hear it, and he did not speak to them without a parable,

but he was explaining everything privately to his own disciples.

So he calls the disciples aside after teaching the big crowd and says let me speak to you

and let me give you some stories that will give you spiritual truth for you to apply

to your life and he gave them some inside

information. But like any good teacher he wants to see whether you got it. He wants to see whether you were just saying, amen, hallelujah, praise the Lord,

ain't God good, or whether you really, really believed it.

And so he gives them a pop but not a quiz he gives them a pop but it turns out to be

a major exam because beginning in verse 35 he tells his disciples I want you to get on the boat and let us go

verse 35 says to the other side leaving the crowd they took him along with them in the boat just as he was and the other boats were with him so let's get something straight as we start our journey

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